The publication now of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad by way of illustration to news stories, or out of the solidarity this and other newspapers feel with Jyllands-Posten, may be misunderstood as a deliberate attempt to offend. Doubtless, some media outlets, of the more lurid kind, republished the offending cartoons for salacious reasons in recent days. Is such offence, or perception of offence, a necessary and proportionate price for insisting, as we do, on the basic right to freedom of speech? Or the only way to assert and safeguard that right?
Rights carry responsibilities. The self-imposed obligation on responsible newspapers not to offend unnecessarily or gratuitously while safeguarding provocative and challenging journalism requires difficult judgment calls.
The Irish Times has not reprinted the cartoons although today, in Weekend Review, we carry an illustration from the Chester Beatty collection of a veiled Prophet because we believe it essential to explaining the context of the story, and we believe it can do so without causing unreasonable provocation.
The right to freedom of expression, in essence the right to be offensive, uncomfortable as that may sometimes be, is so central to liberal democracies that only the intolerant take umbrage and offence so readily. The anger and violence being manifested by the Muslim world concerning cartoon depictions of Muhammad is bewildering to many.
We, in Europe, take many of our freedoms for granted and have done so for some time. Islam, and our attempts to accommodate it within our multicultural societies, is forcing the acknowledgment of an uncomfortable reality. There is, in truth, a clash of civilisations in the modern world.
In most of the liberal democracies of the Western world, more or less nothing is sacred. In Ireland, although retaining a prohibition on blasphemy in the Constitution - "The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law" - the courts have proved permissive. In the one case brought to them in the last century, they found that blasphemy was impossible to define. And rightly so.
Although the righteous indignation being expressed about the cartoons is clearly, for many, a reflection of displaced rage about perceived Western maltreatment, there is no doubt a sense of hurt felt at the physical representation of the Prophet, not least in the denigrating context of a cartoon. This is seen as a form of idolatry - some Muslims go as far as objecting to any art which depicts humans. The Taliban's destruction of the statues of the Lord Buddha is an example.
Freedom of expression is not absolute. But it does impose on Muslims, who choose to live in Europe, the obligation to respect and accept all our values and freedoms.